The first step
I ran into the vast emptiness where the only thing I could see was the bright lights above and the only thing I could feel was the extreme fatigue and the crushing gravity on the Instance dungeon.
The funny thing about a dungeon created by a Ruler is that while it mimics the location and buildings of the real world, it can also be changed on a whim by its creator.
Case in point. What was once my room in a cheap hotel on the hills of Seoraksan National Park, is now an endless plane with the only thing retained from my room being the ceiling lights and the floor.
[Tenth Task: Complete]
With that prompt, I stopped my workout for the day and settled down to receive my reward.
With an experienced eye, I browsed through the list of E-rank items and chose a raw material that I had been eyeing for some time.
[Rewards Chosen: The scales of the White Wyvern, Skill: Flash step (Active), Knowledge pack: Blacksmithing: LVL 5]
It has been more than a week since I awakened and started training and I can say with confidence that I can now reliably be considered an A-rank hunter by human standards.
During the first week of my training, I had already realized that if I don't start doing tasks continuously for a few days at least, I will not be able to become strong enough to defend my family. So I decided to take a vacation in the Seoraksan National Park. Of course, I did not tell Jin-woo or Jinah that I am going to train. I instead told them that I am going to relax for a little bit before liquidating a few assets that our parents had left us with.
This was something that was different from what I remember. In this world, our parents actually left us with a sizable amount of property and money to our name since our father was an S-rank hunter, although the ranking system didn't exist back then. But since most of these properties were on the name of our mother and a few were on my name as the eldest sibling, Jin-woo was not able to liquidate these properties to support my mom and my medical bills during the last four years. It also did not help that all the money save up in the banks and in cash was used up in the first year alone since the medical fee for those in Eternal slumber is quite exorbitant. This was what actually led to Jin-woo working as a Hunter to support our medical fees, Jinah's education, and normal needs, and make ends meet.
In this regard, I can already say that Jin-woo is already leagues ahead of me when it comes to money management since I never had to worry much about money in my previous life.
Thankfully, now that I am awake, I can liquidate some of our properties and provide enough money for our small family to live happily for at least a year. After that, we will not have to worry about money again since Jin-woo and I would already be S-rank by then and will earn good money.
With my rewards obtained, I opened my status screen.
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[Status]
[Player: Sung Changmin] [Level: 16]
[Job: None] [Fatigue: 0]
[Title: None]
HP: 2000/2000
MP:4000/4000
[Strength: 45]
[Agility: 30]
[Sense: 35]
[Vitality: 25]
[Inteliigence:42]
[Remaining points: 0]
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With this, I should be ready for my first Instance Dungeon with monsters.
The reason why I waited this long is that I was not confident that I could fight monsters from a C-rank Instance Dungeon.
Yes, that bastard, the brightest fragment, is directly shoving me into a C-rank Instance dungeon, which can be translated into a high B-rank or low A-rank dungeon in the human world.
Thankfully, I did not waste the rewards from my tasks and gained a good haul.
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[Skills]
[Active]
[Conceptual Reinforcement Lvl: 10] [MP: 1]
--A form of Reinforcement that has never been seen or heard before. Instead of increasing your power by directly encasing your body in mana, this skill strengthens your physical form on a conceptual level.
Warning: the higher the level of the skill, the lower the chance of being inflicted with the Status: Conceptual damage.
[Ruler's Authority Lvl:8] [MP: 5]
--The authority of a ruler. The power to control things with your authority as a Ruler's successor. The higher the level, the stronger your domination over objects and creatures.
Warning: The telekinetic effect of this skill will not work on opponents that are stronger than you.
[Flash Step Lvl: 1] [MP: 200]
--The ability to instantly arrive at your destination. The downside of the skill is that you can only travel in a straight line. The current distance that can be traveled is 500 meters.
Warning: The higher the level of the skill, the longer the distance traveled and the lower the MP consumption.
[Augmented sight Lvl:10] [MP: 10]
--By channeling mana into the eyes, the optic nerves, and the part of the brain responsible for vision, this skill allows the user to see things that are normally not visible to anyone else. This skill also gives enhanced vision, multispectral vision, zooming ability, and night vision.
Warning: Since this is a derivative of Conceptual Reinforcement, the same penalties apply to this skill. The higher the level, the lower the chance of Status: Blindness.
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The augmented sight is a skill that I developed when the brightest fragment punted my ass into an Instance dungeon that had a very small light source and had uneven terrain and traps.
I almost died when I stumbled onto a trap door that led to a hole in the floor filled with lava.
Forced to adapt to that situation and in desperation, I tried to use Reinforcement on my eyes, and when that failed to give me any significant results, I decided to take inspiration from mother nature.
I created a film of mana to function as a pseudo-reflector behind the photo-receptors of the eye, just like a feline has, and used mana to slow down the speed with which the lens of my eyes processes the photons. But this process led to a serious problem.
Due to the fact that I had slowed down the processing speed of my eyes, my reaction time was completely shot. This led to me using mana to augment my optic nerves and the part of the brain responsible for turning the photon information into images to work much faster.
The result, was perfect night vision in even the darkest of places.
Then, I played around with this skill, went blind a few times, and was forced to use the precious few healing potions I got from the brightest fragment, and finally figured out the trick to changing between visual spectrums. That was what created the final skill, Augmented sight.
Even the brightest fragment was shocked by this skill because even he does not have this skill.
But then, what happened to all the other skill rewards I gained in the previous ten tasks I completed? Well, they all went into my passive skills.
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[Skills]
[Passive]
[High-speed Regeneration Lvl: 8]
--This skill allows the user to heal from any kind of injury at a rapid rate. The higher the skill level, the faster the regeneration.
[Increased metabolism Lvl: 20]
--This skill allows you to digest food and drinks at an extremely high rate and efficiency. The higher the skill level, the faster and better the metabolism efficiency]
[Iron Stomach Lvl:2]
--This skill allows you to eat and digest all kinds of food. You can even eat monsters that are normally inedible. The higher the level, the more dangerous and inedible things you can digest.
[Assimilation Lvl:2]
--This skill allows you to extract a skill from anything that you eat. The chance of success for assimilation is 0.5%
The higher the level, the greater the chance of assimilation.
[Magic Blacksmithing Lvl:5]
--This skill gives you the ability to craft items from materials. The higher the skill, the better the materials you are able to use and the higher the chances of successful crafting of an item.
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Except for blacksmithing, I got every other skill from the brightest fragment as a reward. But then, I started to doubt how he had all these skills in the first place.
All of these passive skills are something that would normally be used by organic beings or beings with a physical form. For energy beings such as the Rulers, these skills would be worthless or outright impossible to have.
When I asked him that, the reason he gave me reminded me of what kind of a Death world I am in.
Turns out, these skills are something that the Ruler picked up from his many previous Vessels across time and worlds during their infinite war against the monarchs. When his Vessels were inevitably killed, his spiritual form would inadvertently pick up the strongest skill of his Vessel and carry it with him, like a souvenir or reminder of his vessel. This was also the reason why Ashborn was able to give so many skills to his successor, my brother. Because he too had used Vessels for countless years before he was betrayed by the Rulers and decided to become a Monarch and designed the system.
The blacksmithing skill is something that I gained through the Knowledge reward of my tasks. I chose this path because I knew that unlike Ashborn and his successor, Jin-woo, I will not have an army of shadows to fight for me.
I will have to do the heavy lifting myself. That meant I need equipment good enough to support me during the beginning stages and to enhance my abilities during the late game.
Besides that, I also have a project that I want to work on when everything is over and Jin-woo has reset the timeline. Without the Blacksmithing skill, that project would be impossible.
"Now then, time to prepare" I muttered to myself and opened up the inventory.
I pulled out a massive furnace and put a low-level magic stone into it which activated the device and flames started to spew out of it.
I pulled out a massive anvil that was black as obsidian and pulled out a hammer that was just as black as the anvil. Then, I pulled out the quenching device.
Then, I pulled out the materials.
First, I put down Tungsten bars that I bought from a local guild on the furnace and heated it up until it was malleable. Once it reached sufficient heat, I pulled it out and started hammering away at it according to my blacksmithing knowledge.
Once I achieved the desired shape, I used put the material back in the furnace, but this time, I layered the material with the scales of the White Wyvern and closed the lid.
This furnace along with the hammer, anvil, and quencher are things that I got as item rewards for my tasks and had special effects.
I put my hand on a glass panel located on top of the furnace and channeled mana into it, activating its secondary function.
The Furnace has the ability to use the mana of the user to combine the materials inside it into a single object. Meaning that if I put a monster part and shaped metal into the furnace, it will infuse the monster part and its properties into the shaped metal inside it.
The only drawback is that if I use anything aside from metal as the base, the object that comes out of the furnace will have random properties and shapes.
Once I felt the furnace stop accepting my mana, I opened the device to see the white hot metal inside it. I then pulled it out and quenched it in the quencher.
The quencher is also something that is unusual. This liquid is created from the saliva of a high-ranking monster. This gives it the ability to change its properties according to the material inserted into it. This allows for the perfect tempering and enhancement of the properties of the item quenched in it.
With that done, I got to the final part and took out a carver made from the tooth of a White wyvern.
I channeled my mana into the carver and got down to the final step, rune carving.
This was the reason why I chose to take the knowledge of Blacksmithing from the brightest fragment. Rune carving allows me to carve runes into anything that I craft with my hands, allowing me to bestow different effects on objects. The number of runes that I can carve on an item depends on the item level.
For example, what I have crafted now, is a chest plate made from Tungsten which is a mundane material, and Wyvern scales, which are E-rank items. That means that this Item can be classified in the lower E-rank thus allowing me to carve only a single Rune onto it.
In this case, I carved the Rune of Healing which would compliment the light element of the White Wyvern scales and will stack with my regeneration skill.
With the chest piece done, I got to work on the hand guards, shoulder guards, leg guards, helmet, and Shield. Imbuing them with the Rune of healing except for the shield for which I used the Rune of Reinforcement.
Then, I got to work on my offensive option.
The base metal was the same, but the magic material I used was different.
It was the poisonous fang of a Diamondback Cobra. An E-rank monster.
Unfortunately, the only runes I know are the rune of healing and the rune of reinforcement. So I decided to add the Rune of Reinforcement to the sword I created.
With pure white armor, shield, and sword with glowing blue rune markings, I looked quite angelic, much to the approval of the Brightest fragment.
"Now then, Open Instance Dungeon"
With those words, I truly began my path to power.